1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus, an imaging method, a program, and a recording medium, adapted to shorten a time (hereinafter referred to as a release time lag) from a time that a shutter release button is pressed for a release operation to a time that an exposure is actually started.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, for a digital camera having a solid state imaging device such as a CCD, there has been proposed a technology for exposing and reading out the electric charge accumulated on the CCD by the exposure based on an external trigger signal which is asynchronous to a vertical synchronizing signal for controlling the operation of CCD (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open 2000-13689). Moreover, there has been proposed a technology for generating a vertical synchronizing signal for starting an exposure period and for reading out electric charge by an external trigger signal (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open 2001-8114).
However, a circuit for generating an electric charge reading out pulse in synchronization with the external trigger is required in Japanese Patent Laid-Open 2000-13689. A circuit for generating a vertical synchronizing signal in synchronization with the external trigger is also required in Japanese Patent Laid-Open 2001-8114.
More specifically, when reading out the electric charge in a monitoring operation and a recording operation for monitoring an object before photographing, because what are disclosed in the prior art references as described above require different circuits for each of the monitoring and recording operations, so that there has been a problem which boosts a cost, increases power consumption, and a circuit area by increment of a circuit.